No longer needed on the battlefield, thousands of pieces of surplus military equipment have made their way to police departments across the country in recent years.

The gear includes everything from first aid kits and wrenches to armored vehicles, machine guns and grenade launchers.

Some civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, have raised concerns over the use of military-grade equipment and tactics in law enforcement. Some lawmakers are also focusing attention on the issue.

“It’s as if shadow armies built up in police departments through the war on drugs and war on terror and have come out into the streets and suppressed First Amendment rights,” Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said after seeing scenes of heavily armed police clashing with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

The recent events in Ferguson have put police use of military equipment under heightened scrutiny. As throngs of demonstrators recently took to the streets to protest the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager, the local authorities in Missouri deployed police officers equipped with military-style weapons, tear gas and armored vehicles.

In Massachusetts, more than 80 police departments and other authorized agencies have received more than 1,000 pieces of equipment from the Department of Defense through the federal 1033 program and other sources, according to data from the state police and an ACLU report released in June.

Police departments can acquire a wide array of free military equipment through the federal 1033 program. Since its inception in 1997, the program has provided more than $4.3 billion of surplus Department of Defense property to more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, according to the federal Defense Logistics Agency. Last year alone, law enforcement agencies got a combined $449 million in military equipment through the program.

Congress authorized a predecessor to the 1033 program in 1991 during the height of the war on drugs. Later in the decade, it expanded to reach more law enforcement agencies.

In addition to participating in the 1033 program, departments can also obtain equipment by applying for grants from agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Many of these grants were expanded following 9/11 as security officials focused on antiterrorism efforts.

Massachusetts State Police spokesman David Procopio said the agency has used grants to purchase two BearCat-style armored personnel carriers that the Special Tactical Operations Team uses when necessary. Grants have also given the state police funding for boats for its marine unit.

Over the past several years, Crockford said, the ACLU has documented uses of excessive force and unnecessary use of military-style equipment in police SWAT raids, including operations targeting nonviolent offenders. As an example, he cited a May 28 incident Habersham County, Georgia, where a sleeping 2-year-old was critically injured after a SWAT team deployed a flash grenade that landed in his crib and exploded. The SWAT team, according to published reports, was executing a search warrant for a drug suspect.

Page 2 of 3 - “What we have all over the country is people losing their lives and being severely injured in SWAT raids relating almost exclusively to drugs,” she said.

In Massachusetts, Procopio described a “vigorous vetting process” the state police use to determine whether to deploy the STOP Team and whether the arrest target has a criminal record or history of firearms use.

“Generally speaking, we would not use the STOP Team for arrest of a nonviolent target,” he said in an email. “And if we do use the team, we would not automatically use flashbangs or the BearCat. They have a set of tactical guidelines that govern their operations, but intelligence and target history is utilized on a case-by-case basis to determine what level of forced entry is utilized.”

Operation plans, he said, must be approved by commanding officers in the state police Tactical Operations Section and are reviewed by commanding officers in the unit requesting the STOP Team.

At the federal level, some legislators are calling for reforms to the 1033 program. U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, announced Aug. 20 that he is filing legislation to impose restrictions, tracking mechanisms and transparency requirements on the 1033 program.

“Militarizing America’s main streets won’t make us any safer, just more fearful and more reticent,” Johnson said in a statement. “Before another small town’s police force gets a $700,000 gift from the Defense Department that it can’t maintain or manage, it behooves us to press pause on (the) Pentagon’s 1033 program and revisit the merits of a militarized America.”

While hundreds of surplus military weapons, including assault rifles, have landed in police departments in Massachusetts, much of the free equipment doesn’t serve a tactical purpose.

In Dighton, a southeastern Massachusetts town of approximately 7,000, police received several pieces of federal surplus equipment in 2012, including four Humvees, four ATVs and a pickup truck, at no cost to the town. Police said in an interview last year that the vehicles were useful for traversing rough terrain and responding to emergencies during storms. The Humvees, for example, were used in flooded areas following Hurricane Sandy.

Similarly, the equipment the state police have received through the 1033 program is not used for “tactical assault or crowd control,” Procopio added.

“We have received dump trucks that we use for snow removal and other maintenance of our facilities, several Humvees and SUSVs (tracked transport vehicles) that we use for search and rescue over difficult terrain or for evacuations during floods, snowstorms, and hurricanes, and several M1 rifles utilized for ceremony purposes by our honor guard,” he said in an email. “We have also received exercise equipment.”

Page 3 of 3 - A complaint the ACLU has is that securing the surplus equipment is often done without a public review.

“One of the central problems is there has not been a public process,” Crockford said. “Have public meetings. Ask, ‘Do you think we need a BearCat?’ Then the people of the town can decide for themselves. I think one of central issues is lack of democratic process.”

Gerry Tuoti is the Regional Newsbank Editor for GateHouse Media New England. Email him at gtuoti@wickedlocal.com or call him at 508-967-3137.